UB Jumps to 11th
on Yahoo! wired list
By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor
From nowhere
to the top 50 to the top 15.
That's the
story of UB's remarkable track record in technology in just the past three
years, according to the closely watched "wired schools" arbiter, Yahoo!
Internet Life Magazine.
In this week's
issue, Yahoo! Internet Life ranks UB 11th out of the "50 Most Wired Universities
and Research Schools" http://www.wiredcolleges.com
in the nation in the magazine's annual ranking, a closely watched barometer
of who leads the pack in technology on campus.
This year,
the magazine broke the top 100 into two groups: the "50 Most Wired Colleges,"
which are mostly baccalaureate institutions, and the "50 Most Wired Universities
and Research Schools," which is where UB was listed.
UB is the
only public university in New York State that made either of the magazine's
rankings this year.
"We are pleased
to have created an IT-rich environment for our students," said Hinrich
Martens, associate vice president for computing and information technology,
"and our students should be proud to be at UB, which by this measure-a
currently relevant one to be sure-has achieved top status.
"This ranking
recognizes UB's farsighted investment of the student technology fee in
providing access to computers for all students," he continued.
He noted
that UB has paid particular attention to ensuring universal access to
email and the Internet, wired residence halls, Web-based access to grades,
registration and financial accounts, and the increasing infusion of educational
technology in the teaching-and-learning process.
The article
that accompanies the listings mentions that advances come so fast in the
wired world that what was pioneering last year-or even last month-is already
old hat, making the effort to stay ahead even more of a challenge.
Added to
that is the fact that Yahoo! Internet Life conducted more vigorous outreach
this year, resulting in 1,300 institutions participating, nearly three
times as many as last year.
In the "Notes
and Comments" section for UB, the article highlights a project conducted
with Stanford University in which the two institutions are "developing
the world's first 'bi-coastal' classroom."
This revolutionary
videoconferencing system was developed by specialists in the Office of
Computing and Information Technology at UB. It uses Internet 2, with its
greater bandwidth and enhanced video quality, to allow instructors at
both institutions to team-teach the same comparative literature course-"Bodyworks:
Medicine, Technology and the Body in the Late 20th Century"-to their students
in real-time.
The same
technology is being used to develop another bicoastal classroom, this
time for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, for a course
being taught simultaneously at UB and at the University of California
at Santa Barbara.
According
to the magazine, UB's high ranking also was based on:
- The percentage
of public computers (50) that were purchased in the past two years
- The percentage
of classrooms (100) wired for the Internet
- The fact
that all of UB's dorms are wired
- The availability
of UB's electronic application form
- Online
and telephone registration for courses and drop/add
- Online
transcripts and course schedules
- The amount
of network file space and web space (11-25 MB each) guaranteed for all
students
Other positive
aspects noted in the ranking for UB include library resources that allow
students to reserve and check the status of books electronically, the
availability of more than one free institution-hosted email account or
alias per student, free printing from campus computers, one-on-one tech
support, an Internet-orientation requirement and computer equipment designed
for the disabled.
The ranking
was conducted by Yahoo! Internet Life in partnership with Peterson's,
the provider of education information. All 3,631 accredited undergraduate
two-year and four-year institutions in the United States were invited
to participate in the survey.
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